In this paper, I am going to discuss two closely related phenomena, namely generic tense and generic noun phrases. By ‘generic tense’ I am referring to cases such as the following:

1. Beavers build dams

2. I write with my left hand

3. John smokes cigars

4. Dogs bark

5. The sun rises in the east

6. Oil floats on water

7. John does not speak German

8. A gentleman does not offend a lady

Examples of generic noun phrases are the italicized constituents in the following sentences:

1. Beavers build dams

2. A beaver builds dams

3. The beaver builds dams

I shall mainly be concerned with the types exemplified by (9) and (10), i.e. indefinite generic noun phrases.

I am going to claim in this paper that the common semantic property of all generic expressions is that they are used to express law-like, or nomic, statements. The first thing to be done is to make this concept clear. A suitable way of doing so to a linguistic audience may be by using the following example, taken from Chomsky and Halle (1968). Suppose only inhabitants of Tasmania survive a future war, they say. ‘It might then be a property of all then existing languages that pitch is not used to differentiate lexical items.’